I’m not sure with how the actual ownership goes here as United has such a huge tiered tree of subsidiary companies, who in turn have other extension sub-subsidiaries underneath them but it appears this is part of the new rebrand. I had to look at their site and as usual it’s a bit over the wall with items mentioned like “healthy healing” as one example. Yes we know we have to heal but for God’s sakes can we get a break on some of the verbiage used here once in a while? They have the bereavement program to help you and of course collect some data to sell to some behavioral analytics folks either in house or out. It’s not hard to figure out their data selling angles any more as it’s just everywhere and their marketing says it. Here’s the page on “Grieving Children and Teens” as if you can’t as a parent figure out how to be loving and caring, as we used to call this “common sense” but Optum is making a big market out of it now. They even have a list of books grieving children should read.

Come to think of it, talking of children, take a look at their annual report as it’s about numbers and not care and don’t miss the 90 page pdf on how your children’s health should be managed as well, there’s some of the normal things there as we see everywhere but they do go way off the wall in portions of it and talks about the rising cost of care for children, chronic care for children, hypertension for children, oral health, cardiovascular health for children, avoiding re-admissions for children, avoidable ER visits for children, and so on. There’s the usual quantitated statistics to make sure you buy in as well.

There the United pregnancy plan for women in here too as well as an asthma plan. The scary items here are that we don’t know how much accuracy there is in this report and how much HHS/CMS will not even question and just suck in too. Also, here we go again with projections here that can’t be verified either with their report they created saying $41 billion would be saved over 10 years with “their” solutions for Child Related Chronic care. Another United subsidiary, the Lewin group in DC made all kinds of studies for the last 10 years on savings and they never worked and so again this it way too far projected but that’s what United does, sucks you in with numbers. If you want some clarification on how numbers can dupe you, see video #1 in the footer here “Context Is Everything”.

Just keep in mind though through all of this it is “hospice for profit” so even in this area you data will sold and marketed something here probably even after one dies. I don’t know about you but when it’s grieving time I find that people are much more comforting than a website but they have those here too so if you can’t find people you can go to a website as well…no lack luster looking for care on a website as they don’t “hug” very well.

I have been through many grieving processes in my life and I never used a website and good friends and people were the real help for me. I can tell you one thing you can definitely see the difference here with their Hospice website and a non profit services as I used a non profit last year and my friends in Arizona said for goodness sakes “don’t use Evercare” for hospice, they didn’t have a very good name at all. Of course I knew better as I had this huge nightmare of having to look at tons of analytics that would be tossed in front of me to take surveys on the quality of care along with quantitated numbers to show they were giving good care, disrupting the time I wanted to spend with making sure my mother received good care. Again that’s the way they work, all analytics and if some get some care well then that’s a plus in there somewhere.

What’s even more amazing is that this is Hospice for Profit and they want people to volunteer. Volunteering works well at non profits and has for years and is a great thing and the only reason they want volunteers here I would feel might be in the interest of saving money. Here’s more about the facility in Georgia. Also be on the look out for a an Optum Urgent Care Center as well as they are building those or buying them.

In other non related news we have issues with their failures on mental health care in Idaho and a similar case now brewing in New Mexico that all had to do with those “Ingenix” fraud analytics and so far in New Mexico two have had their day in court and have been found innocent of the charges brought against them by Ingenix/now Optum. Of course the Optum QSSI programming group located in the US and in India certainly seems to be opening many doors of late for the company to get even further wedged in the government and make more money from them as well. BD

Health care services company Optum, a unit of Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc., will be opening a new 24/7 inpatient hospice care facility in Birmingham this week.

Optum Hospice Care Suites will be located on Montevallo Road next to the St. Martin's in the Pines senior living facility.

The 10-bed facility will bring 20 jobs to Birmingham and provide the same medical support of an emergency room but focused more like a hospice facility where it is more like a home and addresses a patient's emotional and spiritual needs.

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.